Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"Has Father Roche gone to meet him?" she asked Kivrin when Roche left to take the sacraments back to the church. "He will be here soon. He has no doubt gone first to Courcy to warn them of the plague, and it is only half a day's journey from there." She insisted that Kivrin move her pallet in front of the door.

While Kivrin was rearranging the barricade to keep the draft from the door off her, the clerk cried out suddenly and went into convulsions. His whole body spasmed, as if he were being shocked, and his face became a terrible rictus, his ulcerated eye staring upward.

"Don't do this to him," Kivrin shouted, trying to wedge the spoon from Rosemund's broth between his teeth. "Hasn't he been through enough?"

His body jerked. "Stop it!" Kivrin sobbed. "Stop it!"

His body abruptly slackened. She jammed the spoon between his teeth, and a little trickle of black slime came out of the side of his mouth.

He's dead, she thought, and could not believe it. She looked at him, his ulcerated eye half-open, his face swollen and blackened under the stubble of his beard. His fists were clenched at his sides. He did not look human, lying there, and Kivrin covered his face with a rough blanket, afraid that Rosemund might see him.

"Is he dead?" Rosemund asked, sitting up curiously.

"Yes," Kivrin said. "Thank God." She stood up. "I must go tell Father Roche."

"I would not have you leave me here alone," Rosemund said.

"Your mother is here," Kivrin said, "and the steward's son, and I will only be a few minutes."

"I am afraid," Rosemund said.

So am I, Kivrin thought, looking down at the coarse blanket. He was dead, but even that had not relieved his suffering. He looked still in anguish, still in terror, though his face no longer looked even human. The pains of hell.

"Please do not leave me," Rosemund said.

"I must tell Father Roche," Kivrin said, but she sat down between the clerk and Rosemund and waited until she was asleep before she went to find him.

He wasn't in the courtyard or the kitchen. The steward's cow was in the passage, eating the hay from the bottom of the pig sty, and it ambled after her out onto the green.

The steward was in the churchyard, digging a grave, his chest level with the snowy ground. He already knows, she thought, but that was impossible. Her heart began to pound.

"Where is Father Roche?" she called, but the steward didn't answer or look up. The cow came up beside her and lowed at her.

"Go away," she said, and ran across to the steward.

The grave was not in the churchyard. It lay on the green, past the lychgate, and there were two other graves in a line next to it, the iron-hard dirt piled on the snow beside each one.

"What are you doing?" she demanded. "Whose graves are these?"

The steward flung a spadeful of dirt onto the mound. The frozen clods made a clattering sound like stones.

"Why do you dig three graves?" she said. "Who has died?" The cow nudged her shoulder with its horn. She twisted away from it. "Who has died?"

The steward jabbed the spade into the iron-hard ground. "It is the last days, boy," he said, stepping down hard on the blade, and Kivrin felt a jerk of fear, and then realized he hadn't recognized her in her boy's cloths.

"It's me, Katherine," she said.

He looked up and nodded. "It is the end of time," he said. "Those who have not died, will." He leaned forward putting his whole weight on the spade.

The cow tried to dig its head in under her arm.

"Go away !" she said, and hit it on the nose. It backed away gingerly, skirting the graves, and Kivrin noticed they were not all the same size.

The first was large, but the one next to it was no bigger than Agnes's had been, and the one he stood in did not look much longer. I told Rosemund he wasn't digging her grave, she thought, but he was.

"You have no right to do this!" she said. "Your son and Rosemund are getting better. And Lady Eliwys is only tired and ill with grief. They aren't going to die."

The steward looked up at her, his face as expressionless as when he had stood at the barricade, measuring Rosemund for her grave. "Father Roche says you were sent to help us, but how can you avail against the end of the world?" He stood down on the spade again. "You will have need of these graves. All, all will die."

The cow trotted over to the opposite side of the grave, its face on a level with the steward's, and lowed in his face, but he did not seem to notice it.

"You must not dig any more graves," she said. "I forbid it."

He went on digging, as if he had not noticed her either.

"They're not going to die," she said. "The Black Death only killed one-third to one-half of the contemps. We've already had our quota."

Eliwys died in the night. The steward had to lengthen Rosemund's grave for Eliwys, and when they buried her, Kivrin saw he had started another for Rosemund.

I must get them away from here, she thought, looking at the steward. He stood with the spade cradled against his shoulder, and as soon as he had filled in Eliwys's grave, he started in on Rosemund's grave again. I must get them away before they catch it.

Because they were going to catch it. It lay in wait for them, in the baccilli on their clothes, on the bedding, in the very air they breathed. And if by some miracle they didn't catch it from that, the plague would sweep through all of Oxfordshire in the spring, messengers and villagers and bishop's envoys. They could not stay here.

Scotland, she thought, and started for the manor. I could take them to northern Scotland. The plague didn't reach that far. The steward's son could ride the donkey, and they could make a litter for Rosemund.

Rosemund was sitting up on her pallet. "The steward's son has been crying out for you," she said as soon as Kivrin came in.

He had vomited a bloody mucus. His pallet was filthy with it, and when Kivrin cleaned him up, he was too weak to raise his head. Even if Rosemund can ride, he can't, she thought despairingly. We're not going anywhere.

In the night, she thought of the wagon that had been at the rendezvous. Perhaps the steward could help her repair it, and Rosemund could ride in that. She lit a rushlight from the coals of the fire and crept out to the stable to look at it. Roche's donkey brayed at her when she opened the door, and there was a rustling sound of sudden scattering as she held the smoky light up.

The smashed boxes lay piled against the wagon like a barricade, and she knew as soon as she pulled them away that it wouldn't work. It was too big. The donkey could not pull it, and the wooden axle was missing, carried off by some enterprising contemp to mend a hedge with or burn for firewood. Or stave off the plague with, Kivrin thought.

It was pitch black in the courtyard when she came out, and the stars were sharp and bright, as they had been Christmas eve. She thought of Agnes asleep against her shoulder, the bell on her little wrist, and the sound of the bells, tolling the devil's knell. Prematurely, Kivrin thought. The devil isn't dead yet. He's loose on the world.

She lay awake a long time, trying to think of another plan. Perhaps they could make some sort of litter the donkey could drag if the snow wasn't too deep. Or perhaps they could put both children on the donkey and carry the baggage in packs on their backs.

She fell asleep finally and was awakened again almost immediately, or so it seemed to her. It was still dark, and Roche was bending over her. The dying fire lit his face from below so that he looked as he had in the clearing when she had thought he was a cutthroat, and still partly asleep, she reached out and put her hand gently to his cheek.

"Lady Katherine," he said, and she came awake.

It's Rosemund, she thought, and twisted round to look at her, but she was sleeping easily, her thin hand under her cheek.